Dead Ringers 1: Illusion Read Online Free PDF

neck!
    Halfway to town, a car horn blares. An expensive-looking red convertible zips by me, close enough to touch. I jerk my bike wheel to the right so I’m riding nearer to the shoulder of the road. The car takes the turnoff to the Estates at Ocean Breeze.
    “Go back to where you came from!”
    The driver can’t hear me, but I feel a little better.
    Midway Beach is small enough that there’s nowhere else to go except the boardwalk, a half-mile stretch of mostly restaurants and souvenir shops. I’m way more likely to find answers there than I am sitting in the house. If only I can figure out how to ask my friends if they’d seen any suspicious-looking clowns lately.
    I chain up my bike and start walking. The tourists are out, like an invasion of ants. Most of the faces I pass are unfamiliar. None are slathered with white makeup. People my age hang out either at the arcade or the carnival. I reach the arcade first.
    It’s at least as old as I am. The majority of the video games are throwbacks, like Midway Beach itself. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga. When I was a kid, my dad used to challenge me to a game of Skeeball every Sunday. I thrust aside the memory, shove through the doors and hit something solid.
    “Ow!” someone yells. Not just anyone. Hunter Prescott. He hops back on one foot with his hand covering one of the most perfect noses God ever gave out.
    “Your poor nose! I’m so sorry!”
    “Ish okay.” He speaks through a long-fingered hand as flawless as the rest of him. He’s six feet two of perfection, all lean muscle, golden-brown hair and striking blue eyes that at the moment are narrowed and crinkled at the corners.
    In the hand not covering his nose are a couple of wedges used to prop open the doors and let in the ocean air once the heat of the day has passed.
    “It’s not okay,” I say above the mechanical noises, music and hum of conversation that fill the arcade. Later tonight when it gets crowded, it’ll be almost impossible to hear.
    “I’m fine. Look.” He drops his hand. His nose is red but as long and straight as before, thank God. He looks even hotter than he did the night we took in one of the Paranormal Activity movies, then walked along the beach. At night. In early February. I was so nervous wondering if he’d kiss me that I planted one on him first.
    That kiss is the best thing that’s happened to me all year.
    “You sure you’re okay?” I touch his arm. God, he smells good. Like a strong, masculine soap. “Can I get you something? An ice pack maybe?”
    He lowers his right leg so both his feet are on the ground and winces. It’s still possible I’ve broken his toe.
    “I could kick myself for not paying attention to where I was going,” I say.
    “Don’t do that. Wouldn’t want to bruish those pretty legsh.”
    Hunter’s noticed my legs? They’re strong and toned, a soccer player’s legs. He’s smiling and looking into my eyes, the way he did on the beach after we kissed. I’ve been waiting since our date for him to look at me like that again.
    “I wouldn’t really kick myself. I mean, that would be pretty stupid.”
    Kind of like that comment.
    “Good,” he says, still smiling.
    “I’m not usually such a klutz.”
    “You’ve got a lot of things on your mind.”
    “Come again?”
    “Yesterday.” He cocks an eyebrow. “The funhouse. I heard about the bloodcurdling scream.”
    My face burns like I’ve spent hours too long in the sun. “I guess Lacey told you.”
    “Lacey?” Hunter’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up. “What would she know about it?”
    No point in explaining I was trying to rescue his cousin when he didn’t even know she’d needed rescuing. “How’d you hear, then?”
    A couple arcade employees are across the aisle, beside the row of pinball machines. One of them is Porter McRoy, a guy so clueless he doesn’t seem to realize Becky is nuts about him. Or maybe he’s shy. He graduated with us but I’ve hardly ever heard his voice.